Grandmothers -- The Untold Story
- Connie Lawrence
- Mar 23
- 7 min read
Humanity's Ace in the Hole
Ever since I can remember, grandmothers were cast as dawdling old ladies who bake cookies, serve homemade soup – and that’s about it. And as lovely as that is, there is another story that reaches further back in time. Old women are often portrayed as feeble and harmless, or perhaps as mean and haggard, but not much in between. In the book of patriarchy, grandma has lost not only her youth, but her usefulness.
It's no wonder many of us have been afraid to grow old. It makes sense we would buy anti-aging creams, green drinks, and fitness packages because the road ahead looks bleak. In a world where sexy bodies are prime real estate, every wrinkle is a downgrade. Looking old is an insult and it’s easy to believe our value diminishes over time.
However, a different story lies buried deep in the human past.
Pull up a seat.
Evolutionary Gold
Our story begins with the wiry old women of the Hadza of Tanzania, who were the first to leave camp in the morning and the last to return in the evening – often with the largest cache of calories. It caught the attention of anthropologist Kristin Hawkes and colleagues in the 1980s because it was unexpected. The prevailing idea was that elderly women were of little value to the hunter-gathering tribe. After all, if you’re not having babies, what good are you?
Inspired by what she saw, Hawkes’ devoted decades of research to what became known as the “Grandmother Hypothesis” or the idea that human longevity, especially in women, must have made a life-giving contribution to human evolution beyond what the eye could see. Unlike other primates, human females live 30-40 years after menopause often with good strength and health. Hawkes argues that menopause helped create one of humanity’s keynote players who played a pivotal role in the survival of our species – not just for mother and baby, but perhaps for the overall health of the tribe.
In a world with starvation and high child mortality, every calorie counts. Every helping hand counts. As in the case of the Hadza, the wiry old women were demonstrating a pattern that likely began eons ago. Grandmothers can work long days unfettered by nursing babies and are highly motivated by those adorable faces (my addition). Tubers are the perfect example. They run deep into hard-packed soil making them difficult to harvest without tools, rigor, and determination – and they are one of few reliable and nutritious sources of food in a drought. It’s easy to see how grandmothers are the perfect match.
Human babies are always at risk, but they are most at risk of starvation and sickness immediately at weaning. If mom has a newborn baby, she loses her ability to bring home the berries – and that’s where grandmother steps in. She is ideal for taking over the harvest, meaning she can not only contribute food, she can shorten the intervals between births, and increase infant survival, making her evolution’s cherry on top for survival.
Hawkes’ Grandmother Hypothesis grew more robustly supported over time, accumulating data from around the world. Ruth Mace, British anthropologist and biologist, reported that a maternal grandmother nearly halved the child mortality rate of the Mandinka of the Gambia. Among The Khasi of Meghalaya, India, anthropologist Donna Leonetti measured that the child death rate is 74% higher with no grandmother present at all.
In one remarkable long-term study of Finnish village records, researchers found that in certain high-risk conditions, a grandmother’s presence increased a child’s chance of surviving to age five by as much as 40 percent.⁴ Consistent data from farming communities in Europe and Canada, highland Peru, Senegal, Ethiopia and anywhere studies are available, only to discover that the presence of a grandmother greatly increases child survival, weight gain, and reproductive success no matter how you slice it.
Long Horizon Memory
There is even more to the story.
Remarkably, humans are not the only species where older females play a vital role. Orcas and pilot whales – two of the few other species known to experience menopause – also rely heavily on older females. Research shows Grandmother whales play a key role in guiding pods, particularly in times of scarcity. They remember older salmon runs, for example, where others may have grown sparse. They share food with smaller calves, and in their death, the survival of baby whales drastically declines.
Likewise, elephant herds are led by the oldest matriarch, who has learned over time how to distinguish a dangerous predator from a less dangerous one. She remembers an old watering hole when others have dried up, or an older source of food. Her presence alone greatly increases the rate of survival of calves.
Human grandmothers and older women were often largest producers of edible foods not simply because of hard labor, but perhaps longer spans of time create more complex skills. Older women have experience deciphering edible plants from poisonous ones, remembering an old river bed from way back when, and the skills to prepare rare foods. They have hard-earned skills at turning poisonous plants into edible foods, or deciphering between look-alike varieties.
They may also have experience with medicinal plants and be able to distinguish one childhood illness from another. Just like grandmother whales, human grandmothers remember weather patterns, sickness patterns and cycles that only take place over a long arc of time.
Across species, the pattern emerges: The oldest female carries the map. She holds the ancient, collective memory that can only be gathered through time.
The Bottleneck
There was a period of human evolution when we hung by a thread.
A recent study proposes that around 900,000 years ago, the entire human population may have dropped to roughly 1,280 breeding individuals for roughly 117,000 years. ⁷This dangerously low number nearly brought us to extinction.
The entire human population would fill roughly two high school gyms. Or a large concert hall. For over 100,000 years the human race couldn't fill a sports stadium.
Scientists believe it was the sudden change in climate, making Africa much colder and drier that took us to the brink of existence. They also believe these acutely dangerous conditions created a next-level evolution of our species. I can’t help but wonder how that changed us. How we evolved to higher ground.
In a world that is unstable, survival would not depend only on strength. It would depend on sharing, cooperation and collective memory.
Where water could be found. Which plants nourished and which poisoned.
In many societies, this knowledge accumulates with age — especially among those who gather food from the land. We cannot know exactly who carried that knowledge, but if the patterns we see today reach into our past, it is entirely possible that elder women were among the quiet guardians of human survival.
When the world became unstable, memory may have been the most precious resource of all.
Brain-Building
Human brains are extraordinarily expensive organs.
Brain building includes lots of calories, a luxuriously long childhood, and a loving variety of caregivers. It requires lots of interaction and experience. And play. Although human brains are 2% of body weight they consume 20% of our daily energy.
Not only did grandmothers and aunties bring in the calories, but they gave our little baby apes the luxury of slow-growing, complex brain development. As they lightened the load for mothers, they created the ecosystem of belonging, memory, and brain stimulation for generations to come.
Science can now measure this brain-building goodness. Developmental psychologists and sociologists tell us grandmothers and elders can provide a steady presence that supports what therapists call “secure attachment”. Studies show the presence of a warm-hearted grandmother buffers against anxiety, depression, and behavioral problems throughout life. They can be story-tellers who pass along the family legends, traditions, trinkets and a sense of belonging – along with increased language and cognitive development. Grandmothers (like me) are slower - tend to be patient listeners, which boosts children’s emotional learning, language, and emotional regulation In the words of anthropologist Sarah Blaffer Hrdy, grandmothers are the Homo Sapien “ace in the hole”.
Elder Women Rising
It’s time to get the story straight: Women improve with age.
This is not a metaphor. This is not a positive affirmation or workshop slogan. This is a remembering of the natural human order. I am reminding your body of what it already knows.
Patriarchy tells us that aging is a decline.
But the body tells a different story. The body accumulates. It catalogs patterns, sensations, rhythms. It learns what nourishes and what harms.
What we call intuition is often memory — The ancient body coming to life.
As I write this, our world is on fire. And as I look across the horizon, there is a slow, steady tide of grandmothers and elders answering the call.
In 2004, an alliance of elders came together to form The International Council of Thirteen Indigenous Grandmothers, to protect our planet in crisis and envision a future for the next seven generations. Grandmothers in India, trained through the Barefoot College have brought solar technology to rural areas so midwives can deliver babies in the middle of the night and grandchildren can read. Grandmothers in Senegal have a mission to convince communities to stop genital mutilation, while grandmothers in Canada raise money for grandmothers in Swaziland and South Africa who adopt children orphaned by the AIDS epidemic. It’s no longer surprising that Argentina Grandmothers of the Plaza de Mayo have spent decades searching for grandchildren kidnapped during the military dictatorship.
These efforts may look different from digging tubers in the savanna, but the underlying impulse is familiar. Grandmothers stand for the future. Stand up for life.
If you’re the grandmother who loves to make soup and bake cookies, welcome home. If you an elder with no grandchildren, come on in. These older, wiser bodies have the old bones that know what to do. An instinct that stands up for future generations. Come on in. We have work to do.
If you think a mama bear is fierce, you haven’t met the grandmother.
Try it on: Regardless of your age, what happens in your body as you read this? You might try a journal prompt: What would be possible if I really got better with age?
Endnotes
Hawkes, K., O’Connell, J. F., & Blurton Jones, N. G. (1998). Hadza women's time allocation and the evolution of long postmenopausal lifespan. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Hawkes, K. (2003). Grandmothers and the evolution of human longevity. American Journal of Human Biology.
Sear, R., & Mace, R. (2008). Who keeps children alive? Evolution and Human Behavior.
Lahdenperä, M. et al. (2004). Fitness benefits of prolonged post-reproductive lifespan. Nature.
Foster, E. A. et al. (2012). Adaptive prolonged postreproductive lifespan in killer whales. Current Biology.
McComb, K. et al. (2001). Matriarchs as knowledge repositories in elephants. Proceedings of the Royal Society B.
Hu, W. et al. (2023). Genomic evidence of a human population bottleneck. Science.
Aiello, L., & Wheeler, P. (1995). The expensive-tissue hypothesis. Current Anthropology.
Hrdy, S. B. (2009). Mother Nature.
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